Wordcount: 3,381; total 56,929

Part 13: Things to do in New Granada when you're bored

On Sunday afternoon, I was contemplating desperate measures.

I'd re-read both of Green's books twice, and braved my fear of the Internet long enough to research some of the more salient points on Google. There was no use going to the Library Magical, since it would be teeming with Alhambra bigwigs monopolizing all the good books. Genevieve e-mailed me to tell me that she was pursuing enquiries with a variety of previous employers. I replied, wishing her luck with that and ignoring the second part peppered with question marks about last night and Jibril in particular. Then I sent a missive to another address that took me twenty minutes to write, mostly because I had to remember my entire stock of Latin and Greek curses, and make sure I wasn't repeating myself while disparaging the ancestry of both the addressee and Jibril himself.

Last night's talk had gone better than I thought, but I was still wary of Kirill. I hadn't meant to tell him that much, and I still wasn't sure how he would react. Anton might not be old enough to remember the bad days before the vampires acceded to the Daylight Concordat, but Kirill was, and there were still vampire skulls in the agents' rec room in the Tribunal headquarters. Anyway, he was spending his whole time on the phone, doing his part for bringing Magdalene Publishing down with a vengeance, mostly through the PR flacks in New York.

I had to turn my own phone off, because Natalie kept calling and leaving messages about needing to talk to me. I knew that if I waited long enough, she'd give Jibril my number, and if I broke my handset, I'd have no excuse for not getting a Blackberry.

I sorted and refolded my clothes, conditioned my hair and read the newest Dontzova book in forty minutes flat, at which point I found myself with nothing to do. Which was why at the moment I was in the kitchen, rifling through the cupboards and contemplating cooking.

Anton entered the kitchen and blanched. "Step away from that stove."

"What? It's not like I'm going to make you eat my cooking." I'd been thinking of whipping up some fufu and sauce, actually. The traditional food had been one of the things I'd liked about Katanga.

"Because you're like a natural disaster in the kitchen, and Dolores isn't coming in to clean until tomorrow." He closed the cupboards in front of my face and headed for the coffee machine.

I snorted. Vampires – pedants, all of them. "I'm bored."

"Go bother Father."

"He's on the phone. Again." I perched on the countertop and hugged my knees.

Out of a corner of my eye I saw Anton giving me a worried look. I'd asked Kirill to give him a Cliff's Notes version of my story; I don't think I could have stood telling it all again.

"You want to play chaperone?" he said. "I've got a date with Michael to go over the inventory in the Belgrant Street warehouse. I think he'll feel safer with someone else there."

"Anything to help your quest for true love. On a Sunday, though? And weren't you helping Kirill with Operation: Revenge?"

"I angled for dinner, but took what I could get, especially since the inspection has to be at a time when the place is not teeming with the claw-and-tentacle set. And Karim's bank is handling the financial side. All I needed to do was find a way to account for the expenses we'll be incurring – would you believe FASB accounting standards don't have an expense category for bloody vengeance? I mean, come on. This is the country that invented railway barons and hostile takeovers."

"I don't think they had to actually invent the barons, they invented themselves," I said as I poured myself a glass of grapefruit and pineapple juice. I'd been drinking it by the gallon today; the enzymes went a long way to balancing the snake's whacked out effect on my body chemistry.

"Pshaw. You just want to spoil my theory. Come on, I'll just get my stuff and we can go."

I tagged along upstairs with him. 'Getting his stuff' turned out to involve transferring files to his palmtop and stopping every thirty seconds to look up 'this one thing he was sure he wouldn't need', so I started looking around instead of hovering over his shoulder. As a concession to Anton's independence, Kirill almost never went into his rooms, and I followed his lead in that regard, so it was rare that I got a look at where the younger Rossov spent his days.

Anton's study paralelled Kirill's on the other side of the upper floor of the house, though in this case the wall between it and the adjacent bedroom had been knocked down, creating an open living space with various areas delineated by rugs and furniture. The décor was more modern than the rest of the house, but the place that home&garden mags usually call the relaxation area was done up in Russian themes, up to and including an icon taking up pride of place on a side table. It was surrounded by several photos, and I was surprised to see that they included one we'd sent him from the Bahamas. I had my hair in about a hundred braids in that one, and while Kirill had escaped that fate, in the white tropical suit he didn't look much like himself either.

The photo nearest to the icon was of Anton's mother. The sepia-toned features were delicate and serious, and once more I wondered what kind of woman she'd been. Kirill mentioned her sometimes with respect, for even with his help raising a son well in nineteenth century Russia had not been a walk in the park for a wannabe revolutionary's widow, but then he also told me she had stubbornly refused emigration, even if only to remove Anton from the eye of the secret police. After the abrupt end of Anton's katorga sentence, when the prison wardens sent her news from Siberia that he had been killed in an escape attempt, she had stepped off a train platform in front of an oncoming train.

I wondered what she would have made of her son a hundred and twenty years hence.

Anton looked up from fiddling with his computer and saw me looking at the photos. "By the way, I need a decent picture of yours for the gallery there. When's the last time you had a good photo taken?"

"I hate being photographed." That much was true – a relic of close to thirty years on the run from the law, perhaps. "The photo guy always puts me in some kind of contortionist pose that comes out looking like I'm thirty pounds fatter."

"Get father to take some portrait photos," Anton suggested. "He used to be a lot into photography in the eighties, before the global side of the business really took off."

I hadn't known that, though it made sense. I'd known Kirill to draw from time to time, and he did have a lot of photography books on the shelves. I'd never seen any photo equipment, but then there were whole rooms in the house that went unused.

"I'll think about it. But you already have a few of me." I tapped the Bahamas picture. It wasn't the only one: there was also a particularly good photo of the three of us in at Arthur's formal ascension and a collage of office party pictures that prominently featured the infamous photo of Anton siccing trained magical spiders my way.

Anton shook his head. "That one's you and father. I don't only like you because you're sleeping with him, you know."

"I should hope not," I scoffed. "I seem to recall saving your ass from zombies a good two months before that happened."

"Right, because setting the bar on fire was such a brilliant idea." Anton finished with his files and skipped up to me, then pulled on my ponytail. "Come on, dear stepmother, let's get out of here before you go completely stir crazy."

I didn't even bother retaliating, since dusk was falling and I could all but see the way he speeded up as his vampire magic woke, so I just followed him downstairs. Once we were at the door, I considered going back for my handbag and a jacket, but the night was shaping up almost abnormally warm for October, I was wearing one of Kirill's sweaters again, and if I needed money I figured I could always mooch off Anton.

"We're stopping for coffee," I informed him as I slid into the passenger seat.

"You're still sleepy?" Anton threw me a concerned look as he eased the Lexus out of the garage. "I thought you slept it off last night."

"Unlike some people, I'm human," well, mostly, "and right now I've managed to get jetlagged without leaving town. Coffee, Antosha."

"Yes, your Imperial Highness," he quipped in Russian. "Any other commands?"

"Just a trouble-free night for a change."

"Jinx."

"Damn."

I belatedly remembered about the seatbelt and sat back long enough to fasten it, then slid down until my knees rested on the cover of the glove box again. I might play it lightly about risking my life, but that time Anton had crashed the car, broken ribs had been painful, nice as it had been to guilt-trip him and make him fetch me everything for a good few weeks. I'd exploited him shamelessly, up to and including taking him for shopping trips with the girls, which had the added advantage of using his good taste to choose my clothes. Kirill had gone into overprotective mode that time, too, and there had been some very nice nights in the house on Radclyffe Lane. What I remembered most was warmth, the heat of the day infusing the night as we talked or just spent time in the same room.

I wondered whether I'd have to start looking for a new line of work come Monday.

Anton's hand on my shoulder startled me. "What is it?"

"You're brooding," he told me. "You look like father does after an affair falls through, and I thought you two were supposed to be keeping each other away from that. If I'm to deal with two people who become irrational and self-pitying after every set-back, I'm going on strike."

"Did anyone ever tell you that you talk too much?"

"I used to have a list, but ran out of hard drive space. So?"

"So maybe I am brooding." I shrugged, sliding lower in the seat. "On top of everything else, I rounded off yesterday by seeing a reminder of my sorry past, and I have an irrational fear of having to revisit it."

"Come on. If I could turn into an accountant after everything that happened, anything is possible."

"You had Kirill to set you right." I'd heard a few stories about Anton's wild days in a series of illegal organisations that meddled in both Daylight and Nightfolk politics, until Kirill had put his foot down as head of the family and channeled Anton's energy into the business, but that had been before my time. Both of them only ever brought it up once every few years when Anton made vague noises about moving out, though so far nothing had come of it. My personal opinion was that both of them were far too rooted in the age when the whole clan would live in the family castle to ever seriously consider it.

"Father'd never give up on you," Anton said as if it was an absolute fact. "You're his. I'm not sure he'd let you go even if you wanted to."

"And that's supposed to reassure me?" I griped. "Pull over. Starbucks."

"Damn. I thought you'd forgotten."

I raised my hands in good old-fashioned zombie style. "Coffeeeeee..."

"Beats brains." Anton ducked, anticipating my thwap before I even thought about aiming it.

I was laughing when we entered the land of overpriced coffee analogues. I usually get my fix of caffeine and sugar in an independent place off St. Germain not far from Rossov Trading, but Starbucks is like McDonalds, edible and predictable, wherever you are. I'm European enough to consider the regular kind of American coffee to be an abomination unto any god, goddess or neuter you should care to name.

Anton was surprisingly well-behaved as we waited for my blended drink. He even paid for it before I could admit to not having my wallet on me, in the kind of gentlemanly gesture I usually expected from Kirill; Anton tends to be a little more in tune with the times as far as manners are concerned.

"What's with the pre-women's-lib trend?" I asked him in Russian as we waited.

The barista gave us a strange look, but I met her head on and managed to quell whatever comment would have been forthcoming. She shrugged and went back to making my coffee-like substance, adjusting the headscarf on her green hair.

"What, I can't be considerate for once?" He grinned insouciantly. "I just thought you could do with some coddling. Since you didn't tell me to kill anyone or blow anything up yet."

"Wait your turn." It figured – he must had been livid about missing the Friday night fun. "You'll get your chance. I just hope I'll be able to get all the pieces before it's too late."

He leaned in, lowering his voice. "You mean Arthur's latest guest?"

"Among other things." I looked at my watch. "I might have answers about that bit soon, depending on when certain people answer their e-mail. I hate trying to maintain contact overseas."

"Ever tried not being so cryptic?"

"There's no way did he walk out after thirty years," I clarified. "I still know some people in the Tribunal who might be willing to let me know why this happened."

"That's why you won't let father or me kill him?"

"Yeah."

"Pity." Anton touched my arm. "Let me know if you change your mind."

"Right now, there's other people to kill."

I took my drink and headed out of the coffee shop. It might have been a residue of the snake still floating fairly close to the surface, but I was immediately aware of the barista following us out into the street.

Anton noticed it too, and without talking we stepped to the sides as soon as we were outside, trapping the girl between us. Fortunately instead of attacking with the determination of a Magdalene Publishing assassin, she looked moved and starry-eyed.

"I'm sorry, I heard you talking – you're with the vampire investigation, aren't you?"

I raised my eyebrows – the one-eyebrow trick is one I never mastered, and one more reason to envy vampires, who for some reason all have it down pat. "How do you know?"

"So you are!" She beamed, and I relaxed a little. Then again, Mandy had been just as bouncy.

"And?"

"Uh, I just wanted to ask how it's going. I mean, all those people-"

"Are back where they should be."

From the way she brightened up, I figured that Arthur had managed to keep a lid on the recent happenings, or maybe rescues don't rate the same kind of rumor mill speed as kidnappings. Her smile showed characteristic blunt and heavy teeth, and now I saw that the green hair wasn't dyed at all. Half-dryad at least, maybe even a full one raised as a human, and you're slipping, Rachel Malory, if you haven't spotted it before.

"That's good. Because there's stuff in the air..." She shuddered. "Just, you people watch out for yourselves?"

"Thank you for the warning, tree-sister." I sketched a bow casual enough not to attract the notice of passers-by. "And I would appreciate it if you passed on that the matter is under control now."

I saw Anton mouth ‘jinx' again, but I repressed the urge to roll my eyes.

"May the Lady watch over you." The little barista dryad looked moved.

"May the Night look down on you with kindness." I managed an etiquette-correct smile and let Anton guide me to the car.

I busied myself with tuning the radio while we drove on in the rising traffic of a New Granada Sunday evening. I wasn't in the mood for Sinatra's crooning for one, and I switched from station to station, jabbing the search button like it was Ralph Green's eyeball, until I finally gave up in the middle of a static band that filled the car with a low buzz. I felt myself drifting in a state of detachment, at a moment when everyone from the coffee dryad to the Prince of the city needed me in the same mode that had buoyed me through Friday night and Saturday morning, though now with vengeance instead of protection, striking fast and hard against all that threatened us. But that was the snake's role, its anger and hate, its inability to realize it might not be at the center of things for once, and if I let out the snake now of all times, I wasn't sure I could reel it back in before it did things I would regret.

Looking at Anton's face, his lips twisting in an irritated smile as he navigated the traffic, I wondered what the snake made of him in the end. It did not like vampires any more than it liked werewolves, a primitive instinct that said danger and death and kill, but then sex is one of the states – like sleep and fury and the verge of death – when we are united, and it seemed to like Kirill fine. I nudged the snake out of its slumber and let it float to the surface momentarily, the precarious construction that was Rachel Malory slipping under the surface for a blink of an eye in a metapsychological see-saw of consciousness.

A feeling of contentment was all I got from the snake before it slipped down to sleep once more, and when I focussed on my sight again, Anton was looking at me quizzically.

"What were you thinking about?" he asked, still in Russian instead of the English we tended to speak outside the house.

"Not much, Antosha. Just looking at you."

"You had a strange smile," he said. "For a moment – like Mother used to smile. Warm."

I closed my eyes and decided to have a long chat with the snake, providing I found a way to feed Pentothal to my own subconscious. "I must have slipped. I'm not a warm kind of person."

"Right." He reached out and tweaked my hair. "Tell that to someone who hasn't seen you fuss over everyone at work if they have so much as a sniffle. Or Father when he got burned in that fire."

"That was just taking care of my continued employment, not to mention the benefits," I scoffed.

"Watching over Justin's Change then. Or this morning – I heard all those phonecalls, you know, and the help you offered to all the kidnapped people, even the wolves."

"They're just little girls. And I should have found them earlier." I felt my scowl deepening. "It's the Jewish mother genes."

"Sure." Anton turned the wheel sharply and pasted the car into a gap between two SUVs in the left lane, to the tune of a dozen car horns. "Rachel..."

I sighed. "Yeah?"

"Just – I yank your tail about this a lot, but don't do anything stupid?" He looked actually worried, and I had to suppress an impulse to pat his head as I would a puppy's. The damn snake was getting skinned next chance I got. "Father wouldn't forgive me if I made you leave."

I decided to latch on the safer part of that. "Kirill always forgives you."

"Not this. And I don't think I'd forgive myself."

The traffic stopped completely as the light went red, and Anton took advantage of that to let go of the wheel and lean over to kiss my cheek. I patted his shoulder as he held my arm, vampire-strong but as gentle as if I was a china figurine. It didn't feel awkward at all.

Wordcount: 685; total 53,400

Interlude 4: Video

[Surveillance Recording 0000000341; Video Surveillance Trial Run Stage 4; Execution of sentence: As Sadat, Jibril]
[Private Archive File]

The picture is surprisingly clear for CCTV in 1972, the date and hour emblazoned in one corner, seconds scrolling smoothly at the end. The camera is placed on a gallery overlooking a stone courtyard lit by moonlight. There are two people on the gallery, in shadow. The woman is looking down; the man is looking at the woman.

The coffin is in the middle of the courtyard, in a circle enscribed with silver on the flagstones. The distance makes it look milky; in fact it is constructed with thousands of shards of rock crystal, natural quartz in trigonal lattices, each of which enhances a warding spell three-fold. The men and women standing around it wear gray robes with voluminous hoods pushed back, revealing their faces. Each of them is holding a silver wand.

The guards leading the condemned man are dressed in black. In contrast, Jibril As Sadat is in white, barefoot and bareheaded. A month's growth of beard covers his chin, and his face is gaunt. He alternates between looking at the stones at his feet and the guards on his side.

Jibril As Sadat is led until his feet touch the coffin. One guard stands behind him, while the other walks around the circle of gray robes to face the condemned man.

"Jibril As Sadat, born in Baghdad of the Many Towers, child of Rashid and Fatima," the guard says. His voice in the recording is faint, but clear. "You are guilty of murder, treason, abduction, torture and breaking the Daylight Concordat. The Tribunal has spoken."

Jibril As Sadat's face turns towards the camera. He smiles. The woman on the gallery straightens and her fingers close around the balustrade.

"May God have mercy on your soul as we have on your body," the guard says. "Step forward."

Jibril As Sadat hesitates, then steps into the open coffin. He lays down and turns his head towards the camera again. He crosses his arms on his chest.

The gray figures put their hoods up and point their wands at the coffin. A sound grows louder and louder: chanting. The mechanical camera does not register magic, so it is hard to register the exact moment when the coffin is no longer open, except for a brief sharp sound that is Jibril As Sadat screaming with his last breath of open air. The milky crystal is darker where it covers the body. The dark stain twists frantically before falling still.

The gray figures step away, filing out the door and disappearing from view. The black-clad guards raise their arms now. The flagstones part, and before the coffin sinks down a ray of light catches upon racks of crystal shapes, filling the courtyard with white illumination.

The flagstones fall into place once more. The guards bow to the gallery and leave.

The woman slowly takes her hands off the balustrade.

"Did it help?" the man says.

"I feel safer now," she says. "I thought I would hate him more."

"Your mind is adjusting to the changes." The man walks around her, emerging into the light. He is of medium height, unremarkable in appearance. His receding dark hair is clipped short. "I remain concerned about the way you separate and repress your basic emotions and instincts. I think agent training would help you with that."

The woman follows into the light, turning away from the camera. Scars criss-cross her shaved head.

"I don't hate the snake," she says. "It's a part of me. I just don't let it have control."

She steps closer to the man and leans against him, bringing their faces into close proximity. The movement looks unconscious and not sexual in nature, more akin to cats brushing past each other.

"You think I'd be any good at the job?"

"Practice makes perfect," he says. "And time heals all wounds."

"Is that the wisdom of two thousand years?"

"Eighteen hundred," he says, and she laughs.

"I've chosen a name," she says. "Malory, one L."

[tape ends]

Day 30: 3,245 words; 52,999 total

Part 12: Je ne regrette rien

Someone was taking the pins out of my hair.

I opened my eyes and focused on the pale blur that resolved into Anton's face. It felt wrong to me, and it took me a moment to realize that what was missing was his habitual gently mocking smile. He looked - sad?

I reached up to help him with my hair, but he caught my hand.

"Leave this to me. It'll help your headache."

I nodded numbly and let him undo all the twists and locks. The night outside made the window into a passable mirror, so I could see my hair settling into the usual lanky disarray.

"Can I bandage this?"

He meant my hand, which was still oozing blood. There were smears of it on the glass, darkening as I looked at them. I nodded, and Anton reached for a first-aid kit that stood at his feet. He cleaned my hand carefully, taking care not to aggravate the wound, and the fact he made no attempt to touch the blood was - endearing, I thought.

I wondered how long I'd been sitting on the stairs. The blood on the window was still almost fresh, and so were the drops pooling under it. Not more than ten, fifteen minutes then.

"Father couldn't get away - not with everyone else there," Anton said.

I licked my lips, tried swallowing. It seemed to work. "I know. Appearances."

"Yeah." He put his arms around me, and I wondered whether I was so cold that he felt warm, or whether Arthur's hospitality had stretched to a discreet supply of blood for those who fancied it. "I have a feeling the rest of the meeting will be short."

"I threw... a cog in Arthur's plans." I knew that with something like this, he needed all the blood clan leaders there to show their support. Anton was probably only able to slip out because he represented the entirety of the Butor clan.

"It livened up the party." Anton snorted. "Ewig totally refused to comment, and both father and Arthur looked ready to kill people, with Eudokia leading the cheer. They really like you, you know."

"Great." My laughter sounded sharp, rough, unfamiliar. "Marcian's blood, if they want me to explain..."

"They'll have to go through me first."

I smiled. It was like being guarded by a puppy. A puppy who could break a werewolf's neck with his bare hands and thought nothing of waltzing into an arena full of Kalashnikov-wielding mobsters with nothing but a pocket knife, but still.

I must have fallen asleep then, dreamless and dark, because the next thing I was aware of was Kirill carrying me to the car. They let me have the whole back seat to myself, and I dozed off with my head against a speaker that was softly playing a Vladimir Vysotskij song. The one about the palace and the seagulls, or were those pigeons?

When the car turned into Radclyffe Lane, I was feeling human enough to sit up and comb my hair with my hands. I even got out of the back seat before Kirill could hold the door open for me, and I kept upright without swaying as he undid the reinforced wards on the house and let us in.

I vaguely registered some kind of comment about food or drink or something like that, but I didn't pay it much attention as I went upstairs. I stood under the shower for a long time, letting the water beat into my trembling shoulders.

I remembered bathing in the river in Katanga, watching out for the snakes, gun in my hand in case guerillas caught me unaware. I stretched both arms towards the shower head, luxuriating. Vampires had it right. Decadence beat ascetism hands down.

I walked out naked into the bedroom. Someone had turned on the night light, and there was a nightdress and a dressing gown set out on the bed. I smelled Kirill's cologne in the room, as if he'd left just as I'd shut down the water.

The clothes were not the flashy stuff he sometimes got me, but the black silk embroidered set, an almost demure slip and the gown cut generously enough to swirl around my legs like a cape. I fastened the three tiny buttons at the front and watched myself in the mirror. A gothic maiden in the dim light, my hair still curling from Eudokia's styling, almost beautiful.

I needed that. I needed to be as far away from fatigues and dirt and pain as I could.

My handbag was sitting on the bedside table, and I took the box out of it, more for comfort than anything else. I heard the television downstairs, Anton watching a "Lost" re-run. There was a light in the room at the end of the upstairs corridor, Kirill's study, and I walked there on soundless feet. The snake, with me still, calming as I had done.

The electric lights were off, but the candles were lit, each with a set of mirrors behind it, enhancing its light, and the box I was holding made a soft thunk as I laid it on the desk. Kirill was sitting in one of the armchairs, book in hand. He didn't look up as I sat down in the chair closest to his. I put my feet on the seat, curling up on myself. I remembered all the nights I'd watched him here, plotting with Arthur and Eudokia, and how when they left, he'd turn to me and ask for my thoughts on what they'd talked about. Fun times.

"Were any conclusions reached?" I asked.

He put the book down. Marinina, I noticed, and he had to be more stressed than he showed. Crime novels were his comfort reading material.

"Not really. Everyone had their own ideas, but there's no reason they can't pursue them all at once. We're going to go after their business interests, since they were unwise enough to get financing from a bank that has ties with one of Karim's hedge funds. Julian apparently has contacts on the publishing circuit, and he volunteered to use that tack to bring down Green's status."

I felt my eyebrows rise. If Julian was abandoning his moping after the deposed Princess of the city, I should be on the look-out for flying pigs. Or maybe his sense of self-preservation had cut in, finally.

"Virgil and Ophelia both opted for a frontal assault, but Arthur talked them down to just keeping the place under surveillance," Kirill continued. "Alhambra will pitch in, as well as track down their sources of artifacts. While we wait for the next move, there's the matter of finding out their exact plans - Arthur was hoping he could count on your intuition in that regard."

"Sure." I watched the way the candlelight reflected on his hair, adding a golden sheen to the deep black.

I thought I was sitting out of his reach, but he managed to put his hand on the armrest of my chair as he leant forward. "Rachel-?"

I brushed my fingers against his knuckles, false reassurance I didn't feel. "I'll be fine. Just female irrationality."

He called on a few choice demons, switching languages at random. "Tell me one thing. Should I kill him for you?"

"You don't even know who he is." I had to smile. My vampire in shining armor.

"Then tell me?"

Busted. "How much do you know about what happened in Katanga?"

"Only what you've told me, and a few rumors." He didn't look surprised. The knots in my mind usually all came down to one thing, after all. "In the fifties and sixties, you were working for someone who was conducting magical experiments that involved a large number of deaths, and that wasn't the most unpleasant thing about it. You ended up shutting him down. You don't like the fact that it took you that long. Ewig was that man, wasn't he?"

I looked at the flickering candle flames. I'd always liked fire. Latent pyromania, perhaps.

"He was Jibril as Sadat then," I began. "I should have guessed from the name that he was bad news. Immortal, omnipotent - he liked playing God as much as calling himself one, and he was rubbish at both. But he got me hooked too deep to see that.

"As to why - it really starts earlier. When my father sent me to America, to his friends in New York who later arranged my studies at Finisterra, I thought that was only because I never got along with my stepmother. I was half goy, and a living reminder of my father's youthful indiscretions. Synagogue on the Shabbat, and then Church on Sunday with my aunts, so I didn't really fit. But I think my father knew something about what was coming. It could have been just reading the papers, or one of his tzaddik visions - did I tell you he was a tzaddik?"

Kirill shook his head. "You never talk about your childhood."

"Well, there's not much to talk about. It was normal, as normal as it got for a half goy in Lvov. Then I went to America, and the war began. Father died in the first month, some kind of stupid mess with Soviets shooting blind in the night. By the time it got really bad, when the Germans came, I was at Finisterra, and everyone told me to forget the world, focus on what lay beyond the veil.

"News got out slowly even there. The deaths disturbed hermetic workings for years, so finally they had no choice but to gather students and tell them. That was 1944. I called up a demon that night, Ronove, and almost had my head clawed off, but I got him to give me the truth, more out of surprise than by any trade I made. All my family were dead, up to the third generation."

Kirill made an abortive motion with his hand, as if he'd wanted to ask me a question, but didn't want to interrupt. I could guess which question that would be.

"I was powerful, then. Hybrid strength, I guess - my mother was a hedge witch, and a terror in her own right, from what I heard. Gifted fast-track, seminars with the post-grads, the whole hog. Calling up Ronove barely gave me a headache. After that, I trudged on for a year and more, determined to finish my studies and make a difference, I guess. I had some vague ideas about working for the Tribunal - you remember that debate, on whether Shoah was terrible enough for it to intervene in Daylight matters?"

"I took part in that," he said wistfully. "Not that it made much difference - my standing was precarious, since I'd taken part in engineering the alliance between the Whites and Reds, throwing all the weight behind Stalin. There was talk of Tribunal trials for all Russian vampire leaders at one point."

I hadn't known that, though I was aware of the truce that ended a twenty-year civil war that had threatened to shatter the Concordat on more than one occasion. I'm not the only one who rarely talks about the past.

"That was resolved in early 1946." The fact that all the killers had been left to Daylight justice still left a bitter taste in my mouth. "I was twenty-two, with all the pride and foolishness that went with it. I decided that if the mages hadn't done anything for justice, it was time to take matters in my own hands. I left Finisterra before I got my degree - it just didn't seem worth it anymore.

"Though I did stop to tar and feather my mentor as my first act of rebellion against society." I smiled at the memory. "I've been told Theramenes hasn't grabbed a student's tits since then.

"The less said about the next six years, the better. I don't know why the Tribunal didn't catch up with me - pure dumb luck, I guess. I killed some people, nearly got killed myself a few times, got my driver's license and marksman certification. By 1952 the ground was starting to get hot under my feet, and too many Kabbalists were moving to Israel to make even Tel Aviv a safe haven. I was working with some Daylighters who agreed with my principles and didn't ask how I got to places no-one else could. In exchange for their help, I took care of some business for them. One day, I was supposed to put the fear of God into some Palestinians in a refugee camp in the West Bank. By the time I realized I'd tripped a ward where no ward should have been, it was too late.

"Jibril's companions - counterparts of my group, save for the anti-Nazi sideline - wanted to kill me outright, but he was interested in what a hermetic mage was doing there. I nearly took his arm off once he untied me. It didn't phase him in the least."

There was a drop of wax sliding down the length of the closest candle, twisting and turning as it ran down the uneven surface.

"He kept me tied up, in that bunker, and talked at me for three weeks. Justice, civilization, a new world order with magic making sure it went right this time. By the time he let me out, I was sold, hook, line and sinker.

"A year later I was in Katanga. I used the things I'd learned as a terrorist to pull together site security, barter with the tribes, hunt when I had the time. We rode out regime changes and a civil war. I don't know what I was thinking, then. That I was his muse, his inspiration as he cut people up and poisoned them only to watch them go insane?" I shook my head. "I was such a kid. He didn't even want me in his bed, not more often than once a month or so."

I fell silent for a moment, then almost jumped as Kirill put his hand on my shoulder. I hadn't noticed when he got up. He stepped away immediately with an apologetic look on his face.

"What was the point of the experiments?" he asked softly.

"Breaking down to the subconscious, the reptilian brain under all the human conditioning. Unleashing the innate magic powers it controls. Healing, premonition, intuition. And telekinesis."

"Creating a Tribunal special agent."

I nodded, clenched my fingers tighter. "He started on Daylighters without an ounce of magical talent, then moved on to stronger and stronger mages. Sensory deprivation came first, alternated with sensory overload. Indoctrination. Pain. Indulging instincts - sex, aggression, self-preservation - and punishing all signs of higher emotions. Some of it was psychosomatic, Jung-based, a lot was through different kinds of poisons. Alchemy, to change the body chemistry and enhance abilities. He's very good on alchemy."

The medical jargon helped, a little. "Once the subconscious was in control, the ego coexisting with it or pushed back, it, it had to be taught to use its powers. Falling off a cliff, having to fight overwhelming odds, solving labyrinths to get to the antidote of a poison. In the final test," mud and darkness and ice in my veins, "he put the subject into a pit full of river jacks. Rhinoceros vipers. They're the deadliest in the world, neuro and hemo, and you can't survive a bite, can't survive without-"

A sob caught in my throat, and I had to breathe carefully for a few minutes before I was able to speak again. Kirill kept his silence, standing somewhere behind me and to the left.

"Using the subconscious magic burns out magical talent, or more precisely re-routes it," I started again. "As the balance shifts, so does control. And then it starts burning out the life, until the subject dies, or goes crazy and commits suicide."

"How did he control it?" Kirill's voice was calm.

"An intravenous combination of drugs and alchemy - a trigger for the full shift and mitigation of the burnout. He didn't have the patience to use meditation, or maybe he didn't want the subject shifting modes at will."

"Did it work?"

"There is a box on the desk," I said. I heard him walking towards it. "Open it."

I heard the catch and the screech of unoiled hinges. I knew what he would see: rows of ampoules filled with a golden liquid, and a syringe that had been outdated twenty years ago, subtle shifts in medicine changing the style until it was instantly recognizable as an antique.

Kirill was silent. I rose to my knees in the armchair, turned to look at him. He met my eyes; all that showed in his face was wonder and understanding, as if a piece of a puzzle had slid into place.

I smiled as I stood up and smoothed the skirts of my dress and robe. I stretched my hand out. The snake came to my call, and so did the power.

A gust of wind, and all the candles in the room went out, bar one.

I stared at that single light. "I watched as they put Jibril away in a crystal coffin. I watched him scream as the ice took him. And it felt like they were freezing me in."

"How do you feel about him now?" Kirill's voice was still so damn calm.

"Contempt. Disgust. Hate, not as strong as it was. Curiosity about how the hell he got out so fast." I shrugged. "I try not to think about Katanga, so it hit me hard."

"You threw blood on him." The greatest vampire insult. "He did not wipe it off."

"I'll believe he has a conscience when pigs start to fly." I turned and looked at Kirill. In the light, his eyes shone like black diamonds. "I can leave as soon as-"

"No." He still made no move. "I promised to take you dancing. I'm not in the habit of breaking my word."

I hesitated, torn between laughing and slapping him and just falling into his arms. Then my body made the choice for me, as thirty-five hours without sleep and riding the snake caught up with me. My knees trembled, but before they gave out, Kirill caught me.

"I didn't hate him for changing me," I whispered into Kirill's chest. "I hated him for controlling me."

This close, I felt how he held his breath for one fleeting moment. "Do you want-"

I wondered - him to let go of me, to leave, to take me to the guest bedroom I'd never slept in, not once?

"Just to sleep." I tangled my hands in his shirt, and it might have been the snake, because from the word go the snake has liked Kirill Yevgenyevich far too much. "Stay with me?"

He must have sensed I didn't feel like being carried around, because he helped me walk back into the bedroom and let me sit down on the bed myself. I slipped under the covers and watched him take off the formal clothes he wore.

He paused as he unfastened his cufflinks. "By the way, Rachela? Do you prefer that name?"

"No." I stretched out, felt the silk of the nightdress sliding over my skin. Sleep hovered at the edges of my eyelids, and what did it hurt to tell him, when he already knew so much? "Leave Rachela Tepper to her grave. It's Rachel Malory now."